Annette Walker, aged 39, managing director of Cambridgeshire-based Opportunity Links, received an MBE. The company supports families and employers by providing childcare information via its website and over the telephone, as well as managing the Government's Sure Start ChildcareLink website, launched as part of the National Childcare Strategy.
Ms Walker said, 'Our vision was to improve the availability and development of social information and reduce the barriers people face. Our main success is in raising the profile of children's information. The whole information movement is key to the success of the national childcare strategy.'
The concept of a national website of childcare information grew from Opportunity Links' start as an internet-based 'one-stop-shop'. Opportunity Links is also responsible for managing the Government's website, www.childcarelink, and supports the development of Children's Information Services in every local authority area. Its also offers information on benefits and tax credits and has links to businesses deemed to have good work-life balance policies.
Other early years figures who were awarded an MBE in the New Year Honours include Anne Watson, head of the Jigsaw nursery centre in Muirhead, North Lanarkshire; Ann Birnie, retired first assistant of Westerhouse nursery school in Easterhouse, Glasgow; Diana Ballardie of the Centre Pre-school in Newton Abbot, Devon; Mary McQueen Megan, former teacher-in-charge at Loatland primary school nursery unit in Desborough, Northamptonshire; and Mary Weeks, manager of Nightingale community playgroup in Eastleigh, Hampshire.
